Haggling Freedom
by rednightmare
Summary: In the late Korcari autumn, a strange man meets an even stranger girl. (Pre-DA:O. One-shot.)


**HAGGLING FREEDOM**

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><p><em>The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness.<br>- Havelock Ellis_

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><p>Gold is a foreign thing.<p>

There is color in these Wilds, she knows: murky green and winter-berry blue; red rock-face; damp godetia, flame-pink; clustered cream beech mushroom; a litany of browns and ambers. Yellows are cheap: sour crabapple, log jelly, feathers from a meadowlark. Rarer are the silvers, caught in thick morning fogs and in handfuls of lake water after a rain. In Harvestmere, when the weather bites her pale throat, there are glimpses of orange: squashes, fox kits, pretty bronzed leaves that she plucks from their twigs and twirls between two fingers. Tilt them just right in an evening sun, and the ridges look like fine, gilded things.

But there is no gold.

Witches are meant to exist above the glitter of material wealth, she knows, and this wet earth-smell around these winding cottonwoods is a constant reminder what magics are real. Black tree limbs knot and loop themselves in the Korcari more intricately than the metalwork on any monarch's crown. _"Do not waste your skin on useless trappings, girl,"_ as Mother had warned, and then reached out and popped a necklace from her daughter's collar. It was precisely the same thing Flemeth had said when she felt beneath her daughter's sleeping pallet and pulled out one gleaming, glorious, golden mirror. The sight of it in those cane-stiff hands nearly stopped Morrigan's heart.

And the poor girl thought she might weep when that lovely glass splintered – dropped on the rocks like some worthless, commonplace trash – and she trembled with anger that fought back her tears. It was a foolish thing to pine for. At a brittle sixteen summers, she recognizes the blush of pettiness, but that does not ease its burns. There is something _beyond_, Morrigan knows – beyond these needled places, where she lopes beside the vixens and courses with harts, reels on the wings of an owl. Sometimes, when the afternoons grow long and warm, and merchant caravans trickle through Lothering, she will pad along a rust-clay road in the shape of a feral cat, hoping for wheels to roll by. Even the most hateful cart-drivers will throw fewer rocks at a mangy queen than a wild-child. It is funny, she thinks, and relishes the secret. Silly distractions. Mother would harp: _"Only children let idle imaginings steal time that could be spent on bettering themselves."_

She is no child. These desires for fine things certainly are imaginings. And still they are there. They linger. They refuse to be forgot so easily.

Morrigan dreams of different places. She thinks of them like stories, and in her mind, the girl-witch is there – in places where ironwork cities wade into oceans and belfries clang, crisp and loud, over the din of a thousand incongruent bodies. She feels cobbles that do not fit beneath her feet. She rasps coarse sugar upon her tongue and swallows sweet cakes that do not taste of dirt. There were times Morrigan would dream herself a little action, a bit of adventure. She might envision herself taking wing and flying – flying through salty days, howling rock-cold nights; flying miles and miles until all the bird-bones ached in her – a journey over great and sun-hot seas. She envisioned herself impersonating a sweet, lost puppy-dog, hopping aboard some sentimental lady's carriage and riding to Denerim on beds of lace. Yes, they are only fantasies, stupid and short-sighted. She could not live as an animal forever; she could not function in their cities as herself. Flemeth has taught this lesson well. These _beyonds_ – they are alien worlds with more dangers than comforts. They are different places. They are lands where idiocy, false magistrates, ridiculous men, and meaningless trinkets choke the mind of what matters.

But oh, _oh_ – to wear gold and watch it shine.

Morrigan never found any pieces of her looking glass – not even a sliver. Bereft of it, and forbidden from riches, the girl took to adorning herself in the only way this life permitted: she would flare wild. She wound wind Anne's Lace in long dark hair, staining her lips, crushing elderberries and drawing thick crimson bands from temple-to-temple. Frightening cowls, tasseled with feathers, mixed well with black leather; she would put them on. She would burn sage to smudge swirls and dots across her skin like fawn-spots. There were handmade bands she'd make to clasp around her wiry arms – dozens of them – attractive, in a way – but, for all of this, and to Morrigan's despair, not a one truly shimmered. They were grim and dull. Out here there is no gold, but only tooth, fang, talon, and bone.

It is a sad court the young pagan calls home, weaving through birch with such beauty going unobserved. Her ornaments are intricate but somehow they do not satisfy. Is there any point to declaring yourself Forest Queen when you have no subjects? Vanity demands an audience. She bored of the rabbits and wolverines and woodpecker drummers. She longed for metals. She took fondly to her reflection – staring through the cattail weeds that clutter old springs, planning, calculating – and wished for only a dust of color from those vulpine, narrow eyes inside her head.

Like the orange seasons, when maples dip their leaves in sap, jewelry is fleeting in Morrigan's life. Sterling tarnishes, bracelets fray, pearls roll back beneath the babbling creeks, and countless anklets are lost among the thistles. This is expected. To truly move with the wild, there can be no jingling or sparkling or the harsh scents of a forge. You must cast off your tethers to the stone walls of Men. This is the way of the witch.

The man that wanders into her small day-camp while Morrigan forages for food is heavy with civilization; he thuds when he walks, smells of dye, and stumbles along in cumbersome, city-color robes.

It is not often that outsiders tempt the depths of these bogs. She hears him before seeing him, and, intrigued, the girl sets her basket down to watch. It is a worthy diversion from these herbs. There are one hundred things a spider's eight eyes might notice of him; there are a score of aromas that might be sniffed out by a dog. Yet her human sensibilities are tuned enough to make this watching worthwhile. The dapper stranger who pushes his way into view, then, becomes a game of mystery – he is a collage of little clues that whisper, secrets that spill themselves, and a good huntress would never miss them all. There is a mean, urbane smell on his shoes. His hair is like sandpaper, easy to spot here; his coat wilts in the swamp, a foreign texture, an odd turquoise; his face is a little too sunny and a little too gaunt. He is winded, she sees. Blood wells in a branch-scrape upon a long northerner chin. Brushwood pops beneath untrained boots. The Dalish would have flogged him for such careless spoilage of healthy land, but she is no elven scout; the sensitivities of nature-gods do not vex her. Let Fen'Harel and whomever else whose toes are so easily stepped upon come. This man is harmless, she can tell; he does not so much walk amongst the breadth of these trees as he does climb through them. Curses, every so often. He is not to be stopped, however, and moves with the white-eyed tenacity of a stalked creature. He looks like he has not eaten or slept in a day.

His origins are not in question. This is no Chasind, no misplaced villager, certainly no explorer; he is not lithe or hard enough to be acquainted with their territory. And, she notes, critically, he is far too fair of constitution and of face. Wilder folk are rough. They imitate the bears they fear; they have no patience for appearances, and Flemeth must appreciate their barrenness in some way. But for being so bedraggled, there is very little roughness to be found upon this city creature. His teeth are clean. His nose is sharp and unscarred. His hair, unlike hers, has not learned to sift through the catches and brambles; it is the manmade color of old ivory and it tangles with leaves. He is older by a few cycles, Morrigan gathers, noting the faint shadow on hollow cheeks, but not so much that the Korcari cannot turn him into a child. This makes her want to laugh. She thinks him pretty.

No bracelet wears he, either. There are cuffs upon his wrists – and one dangles half a broken chain.

She follows him, for a time. She makes her feet into soft scale, lets her eyes roll, melts into a cottonmouth, weaving soundless through dry undergrowth. There is some caution, but no ill-intent. Witches are to be feared, particularly by lost boys who are swallowed by the low, humming lights of hinterland dusk – but he ought not fret about this one overmuch. Morrigan is mostly curious. This is not suspicion so much as seeking answers to the things she does not already know.

She _does_ know what Mother would do. Fortunately, this daughter is very much not her mother. It is so rare that there are visitors here; it is even rarer that they are anything but mountaineers or the occasional scout. But she does have a motive, yes, that reaches beyond clinking shackles and clumsiness and novelty. What she sees outshines all else every time this man turns his head and the sun hits low through these mangroves.

He wears a ring of gold in each ear.

Morrigan watches intently as he happens upon her unlit firepit. She watches him sag wearily – watches bronze eyes flit about – before he dares to spark it with a flare of magic. His casting form is methodic in the way of wizards. _'A Circle mage,'_ the girl discerns, though cannot imagine what one of their tome-buried students is doing traipsing about her wood. It is no matter. She will find out soon enough. She watches him pace, attempt to sit upon a log, then lurch nervously up and walk to the small pool of fresh rainwater nearby. A leaf bed makes it slick and insulated. He dips ten fingers in and swishes, rubbing cool, clear water over his face. Droplets splatter with a flick of long, uncalloused hands.

He is listening closely, his ears tweaked for pursuers, but the man may as well be deaf compared to any self-respecting wilderfolk. She slithers to a rock behind him and sheds back to her own skin.

He turns around to see a witch perched neatly upon the ground – smiling darkly, snake eyes blinking, her image one of promises and bargains and devil's teeth.

The reaction is reasonable. Morrigan is well aware she looks like what she is, and he flails backwards, boots stomping water, hands engulfed in flame. A shout, surprised and clear and strong. Even his magic smells of metal. Some concern for her life might be warranted, but she sees fear flash across this man's face and knows better than to make sudden movements. Instead, the witch waits. Her petite chin props itself upon a palm heel. A knee is tossed idly over its partner. Maroon cloth hangs in heavy rags at elbows, collarbone and belly; her leggings smell of turtle wax. His anxiety tangles oddly with hesitation – the intruder is just a _girl_, after all, appearing less and less threatening by the moment – and she watches him debate with palms full of heat. There is nothing to give her intentions away. Indeed, Morrigan is not sure she knows her intentions as of yet; she looks on happily as those twin gold bands catch and bend the hot light from the fire.

"Interesting," is all she says, finally, and a smug complacence that seems to calm him down.

His fingers roar at either side. The tie that holds his hair is loose. His stare is spooked and looks like ginger from behind the glow.

More than anything else, he looks apt to bolt at any moment, and she does her best to keep things civil.

"How now, my good man? Calm yourself. I mean no harm. 'Tis only your kin from the old world; there are no barbarians or clerics here," Morrigan calls out, though the brotherhood she promises is a lie – a free witch feels no connection to those limp, mewling wizards who wear the Chantry's collar. Her grin, given to encourage, is more disturbing than it ought to be. Her mane falls choppily and it bristles like a wolf's back. "I come to see if thou art lost as thou looks. And by looks, that is very lost, indeed."

These little meetings are always awkward; seems no one ever knows what to say.

"Oh, no," he titters. The flame coughs out, leaving ten fingers curled and uncomfortably warm. "I'm fine."

Morrigan indulges with a slow, incredulous blink. Her wrapped foot swings casually. "Is that so? Then perhaps I should not interfere. You seem to be availing yourself of my camp quite well on your own."

The man looks about guiltily. "This puddle is yours? Ah. I didn't realize. I'll just be going, then," slurs a lazy Fereldan accent she does not care to pin down.

The witch does not allow it. When he moves – drawn-out, wary steps backwards; hands still at-the-ready, smelling of Fade – she stands up. This simple action makes him skitter like an elk calf. He stands in shallow water, mud sticking to his soles. _"Never show your hesitation. Never stink of fear, even when it seems death might soon leap upon you. For in the matter of fighting men, my dear, the advantage is always yours. You are a terrible unknown. And fear of the unknown," _Flemeth has said many a time, over many a charred templar corpse, _"trumps all."_

But she is feeling cordial today. And – as a witch knows – no owners has this savage land. Even Mother, old and gnarled, is but a ward upon its fragile grass. One controls only how welcome they are, and foreign footsteps, especially his, are not at all courteous.

"What is a young mage such as you doing away from his Circle, I wonder?" the girl asks, keeping her distance for now. He stares, unabashed. Of course he does – it is crossroads with a witch. Then again, Morrigan is aware her accent is not witchy at all; it is alarmingly clear; she has inherited Mother's dated vernacular, but tailored it with spry, lilting, literary notes.

When he recovers – and recover he does – there is indecision. He has to cut and sartor carefully his reply. Morrigan does nothing to dissuade his fear of her; she awaits him with crossed forearms, proud and expectant, like the barbarian-princess he assumes her to be, some would-be chieftain's woody gem.

"Um… escaping?" he tries. She might laugh at his lame tone were first impressions not so very important.

"That I gathered. What is it thou runs so headlong into my wilds to escape? It must be a dreadful foe, indeed, to drive you through the Korcari. Whatever danger thou dost think me—" She flicks a glance at his hands; they still radiate like fresh forge steel. "—know there are far worser fiends loitering in this wood than I. As it is, and if friendship is to be ranked by the least intent to do ill, I would even suggest that I am your closest friend in this place."

"But, uh." A whisper. He speaks with the caution of conspiratorial men. "You're a maleficar, though, aren't you?"

"I do not acknowledge that word. My magics are older than yours; they have no proper names. The jargon of cities and towers weighs little upon me."

"But you're a hedge witch," he insists. Flemeth's daughter listens to discover what it is these stonework folk – so sophisticate, so terribly couth – know her to be. "We hear a little of your kind. Woodsman tales and whatnot. And they mostly involve seduced, eaten peasants, which is why this entire affair – if you'll pardon my bad manners – makes me just a little bit antsy. What did you… where did you come from, anyway? I was just—"

Morrigan does not bother with indignity; she is annoyed. His caution is going to spoil her performance. The girl sighs sharp and tangy as she flicks a palm. "And is it also in your schoolbooks that a witch cannot be friendly? Had you but only asked me, wouldst I have said: 'This glade is lonely, it is quiet, and I tire of myself. Come to share the breadth of my fire, mage, that you may warm your stomach and your bones.' But as thou forgets thine city manners so quickly…"

He looks at her sidelong with light feet, a jackrabbit watching a cat.

"I will not force you," she snaps. The witch turns from him, then. She skulks with purpose towards the soft flat dirt of this creek bed, were sits her abandoned pit. His scholarly city-fire, so formulaic, has already suffocated and died out – not because the magic is poor, but because he neglected to clear away wet leaves. Pathetic. But expected from these people, who are so dumb to nature's curve. His fumblings left the small gathering of delicate dogwood sticks mostly untouched; her supple knees bend swiftly, and she squats to pull the ruined bits away. "You are free to stumble through these woods on your own. Perchance, if the mage is lucky, he will blunder into a hungry bear before he tickles the nose of Chasind hounds."

He must think himself a contrite field-mouse, standing so still, eyes wary – but she can hear the mage as he breathes his whistling city breath. Morrigan feigns indifference and digs away moss with a twig that is as stubborn as she. Her shoulders are gamey; ribs glide under thin human hide. These movements intimidate. Gold taunts behind the thatches of her spine.

"Do templars never come through here?" the man asks – after what seems like an age to his digging host – and she takes this question as a truce.

Her response teases. The childish delight of a simple _no_ through fangs that smile so implies murder. "Ai, they have been known to," she sings, "but they never get very far."

She kindles a camp with nothing but branches and rock. She leaves no footprints. What power she exercises is natural, learned but not taught – to a leashed, tutored mage, she paints an easy figure to admire.

He mulls it over for another moment, grabs the point of his fine chin in a long-fingered hand, frowns – and joins her.

"They'll be after me," the runner explains, folding sloppy, lanky legs, fingers worrying his boot laces. He sits on the ground across from Morrigan in an unpretentious manner as she secures their fire. His face is drawn and anxious, but not only because of her, and anyone could guess why. Gold hair, gold rings, gold flecks winking when muted sunlight strikes the amber of his eyes. She does her best not to look at him while piling extra undergrowth. Ambivalent acts, cool appearances, and pagan theatrics are dearer than this daughter would ever admit. "Mage-hunters. More a matter of time than anything else. Caught me outside this one-horse, tumbleweedy old village… what was the…? Barely a speck. Loth… Lathering?" (She could correct him, but it's irrelevant. The witch permits him babble on because his tension and hand motions are fascinating. He is incredibly nervous; he notes her work and begins to shove clumpy, unskilled fistfulls of dead fronds into the pit, solely for something to do. She removes the inappropriate patches thrust in, but her guest is too preoccupied to notice this.) "Set me back on their stupid little caravan. Cuffed me like a common cutpurse." Snort; titter; an emphatic jingle of the cast-iron dragging his wrist. "Lot of good that did, though – escaped from them again just last night. Honestly. You make your cuffs _magic_-proof but not _smash_-proof? Only a templar could be that empty-headed, I swear. Some lout on our wagon left a hatchet stuck out plain as day, so I took it up and bolted. I couldn't go back to the town, of course, which is why I'm out here. They're going to come after me, though. You make no mistake; they want me back. Maker knows why so much damn trouble for one 'eensy apostate, but! I'm not going. And this time they're really going to bleed me, too. _'Ooh, a runaway – must be dangerous; who knows what gets into these mages, always springing off? Only one thing to do about that._' Chop! Schwing! Look at that spurt! It's all rot, is what it is."

He collapsed – the only word for it – slumping shoulders and racing voice into an exhausted, long-faced puff.

She moves a woolly caterpillar to safety, yanks a wayward root, and sits, more coyote than human. Morrigan bores at him with eyes golder than any glimmer in his ears.

"So… who did you say you were, again?" he asks, face scrunching, though it is clear she never volunteered any introductions. The man has entirely forgotten his. "What's your story, anyway?"

"Story? I am no bard, cantering here along the peat to tell you fairytales. Perhaps the question one such as yourself should be asking – you, who flees so headlong through these lands – is how I came to find you."

His clanged-bell expression is not clever, but the man's foolish city words do, she confesses, have their own special sort of charm. "Oh. That _is_ a good question. Is it one you're game to answer nicely, or should I be getting up to run some more now?"

"I have already told you. 'Tis not I you must fear. You, mage – with your heavy footsteps, loud breath, boots that crackle on the twigs – are a greater threat to yourself than a little witch who lives in her wood. The trail you walk is one in passing, I can see, and you have no special reason to be gracious to it. But these knights upon your heels are not dangerous to you alone. And there are those who must make this copse their home."

He is penitent enough to look embarrassed. His speech slows; his limbs slacken; his dirty knees no longer bounce with excess energy. But gold still twinkles brazenly in the damp air. "I've run an awfully long way…" the young man tells her, a grimacing grin – and for all his smartly-chosen words, Morrigan can hear truth in how desperate this confession is. She can smell it in the blood that smears into his battered soles. It is a question in the mind of every child who has risen from some humble hay loft or satin bed to feel magic lick her palms. It is a wonder, grim and unspoken, shared by them all: _how much farther can I run?_

"I imagine that you have, friend mage," the maleficar says softly, her reassurance kind.

She makes an offer unplanned.

"Was I out gathering my supper whenst I did hear your clumsy feet. The basket is only just nearby and I have found food plus one. If your stomach is empty – and you are not a choosy city child – I would not refuse to fill it for you. Wait here," the girl instructs him, then stands, stern and willowy, to find her foragings. "This water is sweet and good for drinking; you may advantage yourself of it. I will be gone only a short while."

Morrigan is but a fledgling demon – her coldness, like her special speech, is not perfect.

Sometimes, she thinks, when there is no shadow of Flemeth to ferret the weaknesses from her breastbone, it is a little forced.

The wilder-witch returns minutes later with a hamper in both hands, the wicker filled with forest greens; a meadow grouse, freshly killed, thumps at one thigh. Her fingers and knives are clean. As she moves, Morrigan sucks a crust of cruor from her front teeth, making sure the incisors are blunted again, the wolf tail is vanished, the gray fur has sifted back to cloth upon anemic skin.

He is waiting on her, looking mislaid by himself at the crossing of wetland and a smoldering campfire. Mother would have badly beaten her if the old dragoness ever caught the dragonling hunting on behalf of a man. But here our harried huntress comes, indeed looking a bit anxious, quick-stepping over shrubs. Her shins shuffle in this short fescue, and, as she moves closer, it seems every grasshopper chirp or rose rustle makes the man waiting on her jump, his sharp chin whipping about in search of steel plate, his eyes wide and tawny brown. It is fine; no armor penetrates these elms. And, nearing him as he sits – sits, with merry arms clasped 'round bent knees, his back turned in happy ignorance toward the cannibal grove around them – Morrigan remembers her pace. She slows from a canine lope to a human _walk_. Feather oil is a strong taste; the girl wipes at her mouth corners to be sure. It is rude to be such a mess among civil company. And, more than any witch should say: she does not want to scare him off. She would like to talk for a while, and food is a small price to offer. There is plenty of food in the dense Korcari. She never has anyone to talk to.

With a briskness that does not quite hide this eagerness, the girl drops her catch, and kneels with her brimming basket. It carries fragile plants, dusty roots, and one chocolate-colored portabella the size of a dinner plate.

She sorts them quickly; the bird's broken neck hides toothmarks in its throat. "Go and fetch for us a clean, flat rock," Morrigan orders, slinging her arm towards the creek. He seems glad enough to do as she asks, and springs up, padding over to the limestone deposits that jut from dank, saturated clay. She can hear him whistling. It keeps the mage busy whilst his host pulls out a paring knife she left days ago in the walnut tree overhead. Tail and wings are set aside for fans; feet and head are chopped for the weasels. Grouse skin is husked away in minutes. Red stains beneath girl-nails. When he returns, she takes the slab, and gives him tender pink meat slices to rinse. It sets nicely on the pit. Flames flick until the mineral glows evenly, greens and carmine freckles sparkling in faceless rock. Her small fingers tear the washed poultry into bits, lay them to simmer, and move on.

Handfuls of polk crumple and darken; she plucks a leaf free before cooking, thrusting it toward the man who sits attentively across their fire. "Here; listen so that you must not starve without me. You may eat from the ground with relative ease. Any shelled nut that falls here is palatable, but shuck the green coating if it still clings fast. This plant – 'tis edible when sprouting and has a fine, red stalk – though take care not to harvest the berries, for they are poisonous. You may take the orange deer fruit that falls this season; it is soft, the size of a hen egg, and harmless, but the peel numbs the tongue. And do not eat toadstools," Morrigan scolds, having seen too many lost hikers die with bellies swollen on death caps. "Save for this one."

She removes the mushroom and cuts it into four large even quarters. They fry slowly and blacken in juice.

"Lovely. Thanks," he says, observing, twirling the stem in hand – and, though earnest, his gratitude sounds like a laugh. All this mud does not entice him, but the smell of flesh from their griddle is hard to ignore. "Expected I'd be living off dirt for the next week. Or until they catch me again. Hardly dared hope to be cooked for. Small wonders!"

The witch shrugs. "'Tis but a trifling skill to teach, and far more common than company where I am from. Where will you go?"

This question jars him; it distracts them both from the sizzling dinner. Gold rings snare and spit back ember light in a dimming early evening wood. Brass snaps on his collar follow suit. "I hadn't really decided. Not as important as getting away from where I was."

"Do not be so sure of that, mage," Morrigan warns.

They wait for the fire. They eat.

The witch has no silverware or china plates with which to entertain. She passes the thin blade for him to dine with. She eats with her hands. Her eyes are vile honey and show no shame or awkwardness.

"So, whoever you are," he says with a mushroom corner speared. "Come here often?"

Morrigan looks at him with the quizzicality of having heard a stupid question.

"Never mind," the man sighs.

Their conversation is fair; the supper that sustains it is starchy, bland, but nutritious. Morrigan does not demand his name and does not offer hers. Details like these do not so much matter, Mother says. She asks where he was originally from; what magics he practices; what towns, wandering this country, he has strolled through with jingling metal and cracked shoes. They discuss templars – briefly. Local vegetation and landmarks are a sound topic for any hopeful survivor. Remedies and recipes are necessary. City titles, jokes, tales of plucky stolen ships and the scent of brine are decidedly not necessary – but they are dearly valuable, just the same. Circle customs and politics prove interesting for all their idiocy. He listens. She teaches. He wolfs; she picks. He tells travel stories; she conjures up pictures, images to let linger in the night.

When you have seen so much, the girl must wonder – what is left for one to dream?

He asks her how to leave this woodland on the other side, but that the witch does not answer. It is not meanness or spite. Morrigan does not sketch maps, for she cannot; to human walkers, the Korcari has no southern end. Darkspawn gullies from ages old still scar bloodily across the bedrock. This wood is not to be _passed through_; it is a sensitive, cognizant thing. It will swallow you up before letting you reach the last ridge of hickory and ash.

"Perhaps you might move to the east, where the Dalish roam," Flemeth's daughter suggests instead, remembering the cocoa scent of Brecilian cherrychoke Mother once brought home from a trader's stall. She rinses her fingers in the shallow, flooded brooklet. Their sky is still a pink one – kneeling there, clouds and canopy cool overhead – but an chalk moon peeks back from the ripples. He is shuffling dead leaves about behind her. Crossbills dig knotholes in the branches above. "Tread cautiously, and they will not bother you. I imagine Gwaren, too, is a place to live. They have not the mage-thirst of lone villages or palace peoples."

"Too far! Too cold!" he declares – and then stands so suddenly, striding off into this darkening sky, that Morrigan wonders with a start if the man is already taking her advice.

"Leave you on so quickly?" she says, chagrined, unable to cloak the displeasure in her voice. Her eyes are lemon rinds and blink swiftly, stingingly. "Thou hast not even properly thanked me, and the hour grows late. To abandon a campfire-"

"Nope, nope," he hollers back, stumbling clumsily in the deepening dark of sumac and cottonwoods. "Just off to water the trees."

Morrigan makes a face.

"I see. As your inane customs demand, then. Do not step on a snake," she chuffs, pats her palms dry on her skirts, looks into the bonfire with a tired sigh. The witch is embittered by her sharp moment of disappointment; how undignified! She knows of the shame civilized Men feel for their forms and the functions thereof. Once, the Morrigan remembers, she happened upon a ragged lady artist half-eaten by hounds at her fieldwork – a lady whose first concern at this strange wilder's approach was not to scream for aid or bandages, but to lament the distressed state of her frock. A stupid reason to be mortified; warped, unhealthy priorities. It was not as though Morrigan had never seen breasts before, besides.

"My _people_! Now you make it sound like I follow the Qun, eat rocks and wear my pants on my head!" he pouts behind a hawthorn. "I'm just trying to piss in peace, is all."

"You must realize how foolish it looks to those who languor not inside your cement towers, do you not? Dashing off, covering and fussing so. You are made the way you were meant to be. What is the sense in hiding this?"

"It's just not considered very polite to let a lady see your cock," the man explains.

"Fah. I care little for your priggish manners and embarrassment. Your body is as nature wills it, as is mine, and why make this a wall to squirm behind?"

The fair-haired mage laughs loudly.

"Oh, I like you," he announces. "You're a great mind."

The witch rolls her eyes, but she accepts the compliment.

"How did you know I was a Circle mage, anyway?" he then asks, rounding his mabari tree, buttoning his trousers. Low-reaching twigs have further disheveled the tie in that yellow mane, but the earrings hold firm. Morrigan shakes her head in disgust. "I could have been one of the Chasind folk. You can't be sure."

"But I can. It is in the way you move, how you wear your hair, the decoration of you." It is a diplomatic list, all things considered. She has seen no other place but hers, Morrigan – and this is just another realm to him – and that realization is disconcerting for complex reasons.

Sunlight slants, making crimsons tangle with hazy blues over the forest; it is still warm enough. The breeze has just an edge of chill. It smells pleasantly of rich soil. This world tumbles, feral and wild, yet the girl cannot fathom any other place as home. What must it be like to venture beyond? What must it be like to live life in strides so immense?

The man flops back down, long legs stretched out, leaning back on lazy palm heels. He grins at her. She purses her lips. "…and because you have just pissed on a holy tree."

"Have I?"

Morrigan studies her nails. "Indeed."

"Well, I am terribly sorry about that," the mage murmurs, but it does not sound as though he is.

"You need not be. It has no sacred significance to me, for as I think you see, I am not of the Chasind. I, like the beasts of these groves, am singular." Belly full, the witch lies down across a drenched log; she gazes sluggishly at her companion, cheek resting on her outspread arm, comfortable amongst this unfettered growth. Such a contented pose makes her look quite the lounging mountain lion. The self-tied love-knots snarl with clover and stray fronds in her wild locks. There is no effort to comb them free. "Besides, t'would hardly be fair. Even were I of their ilk, one does not pelt a boy for knowing less than his elders."

"Boy," comes the scoff. He kicks a clod of dirt with a boot heel, looking even more boyish with the deed. Morrigan closes her eyes briefly. It is almost pleasant enough to nap. "It's always 'boy' wherever I go, isn't it? You know, I'm not sure you've got the qualifications to call me that. You seem a bit littler than me," he notes, squinting one eye. "How old are you, anyway?"

"'Tis not an important thing." The witch is dismissive; she looks harder at him for a moment, so brazen and blithe whilst all her maneuvers have been tailored with care. Those hoops begin to twinkle vermeil in the sunset. A doe sniffs for acorns not far away; squirrels poke about the leftovers of their repast. "One is first a child in heart and mind, not in size."

"I bet you're not sixteen," he says, jaunty as a lark. "Bet you're just a barefaced girl."

Morrigan watches him flung out and untailored, clashing with the landscape, and she straightens. The girl frowns. "Do not ask me such trivial things. I do not ask you such things. It is irrelevant."

"Well, I didn't mean anything by it," the mage backpedals, chuckling through that knifelike nose of his. He is tomcat to her panther mask. She flattens out tangles with claws. "Just a casual observation, is all. No call to take offense. Actually, most women would treat that as a compliment."

The young witch – with skinny knees, rounded cheeks, unskilled war paint, too-thin hips – is not placated. She is not most women, and scowls the scowl of ancient pines. "I am not offended. 'Tis merely principle, and he who dost presume too quickly treads a dangerous road, indeed."

A thoughtful buzz is the only truce he has. His clicks his boot toes together from boredom. Muck has dried the eyelets shut; soot snugly packs the fractures. "Polishing class of the wood, I guess. You know, girl nor not, you've sure got a funny way of talking," the man comments, smiling at her turns of phrase. They are not quite uniform – her idioms are mixed, her pronouns are unpredictable, and her cute proverbs are slightly twisted – but there is something beguiling about them. It is the pieced-together patois of lone wolves; it tries so hard to be imposing. "We don't tend to mind our poetry in Chantry-town. Well. I tried speaking in rhyme once, but it didn't turn out. Where does a poor heathen go to learn to talk like that?"

She does not want to be the darling tale of a wilder child who welcomed him. In all her sky castles and idle fantasies, Morrigan is a sylvan queen, callous and fickle as the wolf-bitch whose form she stole. She is a powerful sorceress, unpredictable and perilous. She is not an old hermit-wife's trapped, uncultured child.

"There is no trick to it. 'Tis only the way I speak, good mage," the girl says quietly, and listens to wind wrap through these horsechestnut trees. "'Tis no more than that."

They sit in silence together around a withering fire.

He glances at the witch a while later, one askance flash of brown, his arm propped up upon her log. "Don't you want to know my name? You never asked."

"No, I did not. It is not as vital as you think."

He tells her anyway. "It's Anders."

"It suits you."

Perhaps he is learning; Anders does not ask for hers.

The woodland light has since weakened, its daylight unfurling, now sleepy salmons and soft mauves. Nightingales coo amongst themselves. His fingers are chapped and manacles have rawed some skin away. Morrigan looks at the broken chain still caught around one wrist. "May I stay here for the night, then? With all promises to behave. You don't know me, but I am grateful for your hospitality. Such as it is. And, well. It's not as though I have anywhere else to go."

The witch smiles ruefully at him. Had she but an oil cup, Morrigan would help him get the shackles off. Yet she knows it will make little difference in the end – runaways are all alike. As the lunar cycles and lapsing tides, they are always taken back. They are parlor finches, these Circle children – they see loose latches and take a taste of a greater world – tastes that many have risked all for, paid with severed necks and silenced minds. This one boasts and scurries, though sooner or later, it will prove a futile chase. It is but a moment in time. Some caged birds can never be set free.

"You are welcome to remain here, yes. 'Tis cold in these wild nights; 'tis warm by my fire. You are no threat to me." She waves a hand over the hot charcoal. "Moreover, you are a Circle boy. You may flee and buck you reins, but it is in your breeding to behave."

This prophecy disturbs him. He looks at her, and she does not expect this look – it is unsettled, chilled, the tarot's touch of death. His snapped handcuffs click. "But not always. Not always," the mage insists, and turns over suddenly, leaves crunching, ready to argue his liberty. His pant knees soak the silt; he faces Morrigan, fingers gripping the scales of her fallen aspen. She sees fear behind the persistence. Only a girl – one uncouth, unlearnèd child in these woods – yet her truths strike despair in a vagabond's heart. "We're of no Circle when we're born. There's no split between your people and mine when we start in this world. Magic isn't that different. It doesn't care whose hands it takes. Why shouldn't ours be reversed? What makes you _you_ and me this Circle boy? It's not who I am – it's not who I want to be." He swears so like what he wants will matter. "I never asked for my life to be this. I never wanted—"

Their lives are not identical – their struggles are opposites – but here are their wishes shared.

She looks back at him. "Rather than list a life of what you never wanted, tell me this: given the whole wide world, what wouldst thou want, mage?"

Anders has no words for what he seeks; his animated hands cannot form it, his witty speech cannot fit around it, his stymied expression does not convey an answer with dodged insults and gold. He fumbles for something that is unsure. "What I want is… what I want…" _Break_. "I want to be like you."

Morrigan's giggle is wicked branches against the glass. It whips.

"You cannot," she caps – short, blunt, conclusive. "But I am flattered."

The mage frowns at this laughing maleficar, heroic intensity dissipating, and thumps back to his bum to sulk. "You know what I mean. You do, really – you have to. You live it every day. You wake up in the cold and the dirt, sure, but wherever you open your eyes, you're completely, totally free. That's what I want – it's not hard to understand. It's not much to want. I want to wander where I want to wander," he grasps, frustrated. "I want to be accountable to no one. I want to be _alone_, god damn it. For once. I want to get lost in the great, big… loneliness of all this." Air leaves him in a gust; it is only half an explanation that has no adequate words. He scowls. He hucks a stone into the hawthorn tree. "What I wouldn't give to live like that."

There is something sad in the witch's smile. Her eyes are late autumn never-ending; they lack the winters and springs that do not visit here. "You might find that if you had, 'tis not the life you thought it to be."

He gives a single, resilient, unruly guffaw – sometimes laughter is the best the hunted may have. "It is ever?"

There are no brave tales or _reasons why_. But there is always sharing – there is moving on. In question-wisdom, Morrigan finds a fine conclusion to the day. "No, 'tis very true. It rarely is."

And she stands up.

"Where are you going?" The golden man twists around, befuddled, calling after her leathered kilts.

"Where I will it," the wilds girl proclaims. Her mitts clap happily behind a limber back. No customs, no ceremony, no decorous farewell; this country does not foster such falsities, such fool customs, such little thoughts. "Is that not the appeal of my life?"

"But I- I mean- " He stammers. "That's it?"

"What more should there be?" she wonders with cocked head.

The mage's furrowed brow and exclamations suggest a child who has been slighted. He grapples to make sense of it; his chaos is of a certain kind, but ultimately, this man is still a creature of structure. In briar labyrinths, there's no sense to be had. "You sidle up behind me, talk poetry at me, cook me food and tell me how one ought to be free? And now you're just leaving?"

"Yes."

Morrigan makes to fulfill her promise.

"But what about the breadth of your campfire?" the rover puffs behind her, hurt.

"Didst thou not wish to be alone? My campfire shall burn for a while yet. You may use it as long as you like, but take care to quench the flame, as I would be most angry were this spot to scorch. 'Tis a glade that treats me well. Your courtesy, I think, it has earned."

The way he looks at her – half-abandoned, oddly small, suddenly open – disturbs a small cinder-flake of kinder stuffing within Morrigan's splintery frame.

"Can I come with you?" Anders asks; his meekness shows the madness in imagining such a future.

There is real hope. She is startled deeply. "Where is it you think you would go?"

"Hells. I don't care." He almost shouts for the truth of that statement, the insanity of this prospect he casts. Dusk encroaches with mist and moonlit grays. There is a frantic pace to his hands and that nervous, fractured laughter. "Don't you have a… a clan, or a coven, or something? I'd be a great witch. I know a bit about healing. I can burn things. I tell hilarious jokes. I can dance! I can make toast! I am, as you've noticed, not too hard to look at, and – not to be immodest – but it has also been said that I am really excellent company."

The cat-eyed girl says nothing; she gives another mild, bittersweet smile.

"Is it… is it just you, then?" The thought mystifies him. The sheer space of this weald against her frail body astonishes the Circle boy nearly to concern. "All on your lonesome in these woods?"

Not verse, not old magic, not heathen crowns or wolfish grin – it is for _this_ that Morrigan amazes.

''_Tis never 'just I,''_ the wise witch knows, for a thousand sets of pupils dart and frisk and flutter about these timbered reaches. And yet such small wonders give all hearts at least a little pause. They will rope him, she is sure; the gauntlets of a city-place are not unclenched just because a boy wants. But that fact does not eclipse what's here. There is a wish that sticks upon this mage, this capricious colt who takes a hatchet to a chain and flees until his feet bleed through his shoes. It is not an intricate one. The most basic desire of people like these is not greed, not lust, but sovereignty; it is to place your handprints upon the world. More must be said, of course. Liberty is never in absolutes. A glittering boy chases his freedom in the piper dread of being truly alone, leaving bars and civil vestments behind; she savors hers in the thought of stripping off chaparral, peat, loam, branches that cut. She reaches for what Mother would never confess is _more_ – steamed metal, baysides, beauty, gold. She will find her freedom by touching them someday.

She grants him this wisdom: "Wander on your path, friend mage. Your feet, if they run well and fast, shall no doubt carry you to other fires. Let this be the first of many. You will remember this day."

Anders is quiet for a moment; prophecy seeps in. Then – with a magnificent sigh – he laments. "Not even any sex?"

A maleficar's laugh is enough of a no.

He regrets it for a breath's worth and, shaking leaflets from his robe, stands to face her at the east edge of nightfall. Morrigan waits for him to speak. She is not disappointed. "Can't always play the odds, I suppose. But you know," Anders muses, rejection forgotten. "Maybe we both have a point. Maybe our roles in this couldn't have been reversed. And despite that, if you stop thinking so hard about the difference between all the concrete and clay – we're like each other more than a little."

Her creed is honest; it paints a pretty picture; it smoothes down the moor grass like Firstfall wind. "But no – you are mistaken," she says. "We are different creatures; our magics are born of two separate planes. I am no mage," the witch swears; a gust stirs the nettles and pulls weedy flowers deeper into her dark pelt of hair. Her wingspan spreads wide; her ten talons arc skyward, like a hawk's. She is uncombed. She has the uncultivated beauty of a vine that strangles trees. "I have never felt a templar's cane against my back. I have never eaten off a servant's plate; I have never sat upon a Tower sill and longed to run where I could not. Ever I have lived in a world where when I tilt my neck back to the clouds, there is sun on my face, and I catch the storms that make me grow. We two are no closer kin than the canary and the crow."

She is too wild – too close. The mage must mope at his silt-caked boots. "And I'm a canary in this metaphor? Perfect."

When he looks up, she is there.

"You blew into my canyon this day, pretty bird," Morrigan tuts. Her fingers sink into his soft-knit scarf; her gaze is sinister and half-mast. He can feel the witch's breath on his chin and, frozen, is pinned between the urge to knock forward and to run. His soles are anchors. She is bedeviling. "But I am not as cruel as the hag who reared me. I will not join your captors, legion that they are. I will not even be a delay. There is only one thing I will take from you, and 'tis a light payment, indeed."

Freedom means the right to have what is owned and to take what you crave without asking.

She _rips_ the ring from his right ear.

There is a cuss thick on his tongue and blood upon Anders's fingers when he stumbles back, cupping the lobe, attacked. Twigs pop beneath stamping heels. The man is spitting from such a burst of unexpected pain; one would have thought a rattler lunged from its hole and bit him, another nuisance that paralyzes. Triumphant Morrigan does not comfort. She beams victoriously and hoists hoop-in-hand; scarlet glistens fresh upon the gold.

"Son of an Antivan bitch! What's wrong with you? What the hell did you do that f-" The canary, feather plucked, is unable to finish, silenced by a preening crow.

"To fret so is unbecoming of free men," she chirps, invigorated, heart jumping cricket hops against her clavicle. It is enough to make the girl sing out. Filly footsteps take her backwards; they pounce gleefully upon the rotted moss-log. She is the pauper girl who has caught a star shot to earth. Pretty at his cheek, perhaps – but so much prettier here, with texture, coolness, substance. It sparkles, perfect, in her hand! "Be content, friend mage! You are unharmed, I am satisfied, and you may pass through my wilds. Remember always that this forest is not your domain. You are clever, and fine company, indeed – but take away this lesson, Circle boy. When one parlays with a Witch of the Wilds," Morrigan trills, exhilarated, clutching the band as though it might attempt to flutter away. "One must thank his city gods or earthly fortunes that she is not in a killing mood."

"I think you damn near tore it through!"

She clucks her tongue at his complaints. He looks pitiable, slumped there – mane messed, palm cupped over his injured ear. Success is sweeter than memories, but ah – they have no call to part on such a sour final note. "Don't be foolish. 'Tis but a pin prick – nothing more. One bauble for your health and hearth. A fair trade, to be sure?"

Unhappy as his loss has made him – for it is a sharp-handed and callous fee – this Anders cannot disagree. He gives the wound one last, disgruntled rub, and wipes three fingers in a lapel. Perhaps it is only good sportsmanship. But the sight of this elicits endearment in Morrigan – a gracious, jovial affection for interesting strangers who have lost the battle of the day. "Now you've made me lopsided," he mutters. "I look ridiculous! I look like a bloody buccaneer! Like I fancy pirates!"

"Petty worries. Replace it at your next port-of-call. Or, have you the mind, keep all as is. It sits handsomely less one partner."

This consoles him somewhat. He paws at it one last time. "You're just dampening the burn, you are. I'm wise to your plots." But then, legitimately curious: "Do you really think it looks better this way?"

Vanity sets so much into motion.

Morrigan's advice is mocking in its shrewdness. She wraps the earring – blood and all – snugly into a strip of cloth torn freshly from one shoulder. It tucks safely over her breastbone. It is hers. "Nature was not meant to be balanced. For every half, there is not always a better whole. Freedom is in the power to be imperfect."

Hemlock, marshes and stone – they lock in as well as out.

He will not see the witch again. Anders sits awake through the hinterland's blackest stretch, crouching wide-eyed near the waning fire. Midnight spurs the temperature low until his coat begins to huddle. Cicadas siren-song. Moonspots filter through ladyfinger leaves. Foliage crunches and snowy owls unfurl in locust treetops; the runner cannot sleep, and waits in fidgeting, primitive tension, listening to this forest bear down for miles in every direction. There is no comic relief or egotism tonight. He waits dreadfully for daylight – for the world to once more look familiar. He waits for dawn to kiss the thorns in dew and yawn color across the bluest hour of night.

There is a chance, then, that Mother is right. Names, birth, body and blood – they mean so very little. What is changeable, she tells, is weak; what one cannot see and touch and swallow with hands and eyes and tongue has no bearing upon those who dwell in a real wild. But perhaps it is not even the _seen_ that matters most. Perhaps, Morrigan thinks as she melts from two legs to four, to scales, to wings – perhaps what carves the line between us all is transient. Perhaps it is merely vanity – these masks, these bodies, these barbed wreaths and decorations – not a nature's law. Perhaps there is not so much separation. Perhaps there is no more fate to be had than what we force upon it. And perhaps all there is to freedom is to perceive it so.

If it is true, then for the price of an earring, she has given him the greatest favor of his life. Morrigan rose upon this clammy earth, and she left him, as he defined it, free.

Anders stands in the Korcari dark uneven; a wolf-bitch watches him with golden eyes.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AFTERTHOUGHT<strong>_**: Thanks, BioWare, for my two favorite mages in all of magedom. Could be any of Anders's many jaunts outside the Tower, I suppose, but due to the survival inexperience, I like to think of it as an early one. I also like to think of little Morrigan being more linguistically decorous, wistful, and romanced by herself. "Oh how she dances under the moon!"**


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